


The Fall and Rise of Captain America

by Dulcia



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Death, Funeral, Grief, Its hinted at - Freeform, James “Bucky” Barnes - Freeform, Kind of Happy ending?, M/M, Natasha Romanoff - Freeform, Sadness, Steve Rogers Dies, Stucky - Freeform, Tony Stark Has A Heart, clint barton - Freeform, sam wilson - Freeform, steve rogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 08:39:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12295476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcia/pseuds/Dulcia
Summary: Brave boy, do me proud-Where Steve Rogers dies and Bucky Barnes picks up the shield





	The Fall and Rise of Captain America

**Author's Note:**

> Look, it’s late and I don’t know why I wrote this. 
> 
> I was listening to Ruelle and this happened.

The Fall and Rise of Captain America

“Breaking news, Cap-Captain America confirmed dead.”

Bucky feels numb, his husband spread out on a grey, metal table, a simple white sheet covering his body, exposing his face. He’s been cleaned up since he passed, but before that, blood covered his face, his nose broken, teeth stained red, head cracked open. 

Bucky stares, hands and arms limp at his side, legs beneath him didn’t even feel like they were there. He can’t even summon the right words to say, his lover, his Steve laid out on a table, heart unmoving. He can’t believe it. “Barnes,” someone whispers beside him. “It’s time to go.” Bucky turns to the voice. 

Agent Carter. 

“How long have I been here?” He croaks, looking back to Steve. 

“Four hours,” she replies. He nods and takes a step forwards, his leg almost giving out beneath him after the first movement in two hundred and forty minutes. He leans forwards and kisses Steve’s forehead. 

“Rest well, sweetheart.” He turns on his heels and feels the stiffness in his knee joints protest as he marches out of the hallway, Agent 13 calling after him. Her words don’t reach his ears as he heads outside, hardly registering the paparazzi flashing their cameras in his face, screaming questions at him. They follow him down the street, not even trying to keep their distance. “Bucky!” 

Bucky stops in his steps, swearing he heard Steve shout over the camera clicks, the flash of the lights. He feels a tug on his arm, pulling him forwards until he’s stumbling into a car, falling against the leather when the vehicle lurched forwards. “He’s going to have a public service,” Maria Hill says. Stark is sat besides Bucky, glasses over his eyes despite the late night and dark car. 

“Maria,” Bucky croaks. “Stop. Mourn... it’s too early for planning,” he murmurs, his own voice sounding distant to his ears. 

“Yes, Sergeant,” she says, leaving the car in silence as Happy drives them out of the city. 

“Where will his body go?” Tony asks, sounding completely unlike himself. Bucky looks down at the gold ring on his silver finger, standing out from the rest of his arm. 

“Our funeral directors. Trusted to care for the body. They’ve handled all of our other agents and hero’s who have died in battle or of other reasons,” Maria replies. Bucky turns to Tony, who turns to him and slowly, so slowly, leans over, his head coming to rest on Tony’s shoulder. Tony wraps an arm around his shoulders, his hand clamping on his neck like he’s hanging on for life. 

The world goes into a three day mourning. People don’t go to work, to school, the streets of New York are barren, grey. It looks deserted. Bucky doesn’t know that though. He stays within the confines of their safe house in upstate New York. Tony and Sam had joined, Natasha with Clint later the following day. 

They don’t talk, they function in silence, the echo of the news playing on repeat. News reporters can’t even seem to believe Captain America has died, but they’re forgetting that not just a symbol has passed, a man has. A man who was defending his country, a man who has fought in wars, only to be killed by a rogue officer. 

Bucky is sitting on the sofa when Maria comes into the house, watching another news reel of the great Captain America. “Barnes. We thought you’d want these,” she says gently. Natasha watches from her seat in the corner as Bucky takes two things from Maria. Steve’s favourite hoodie with a duck, of all things, printed on the front and his wedding ring. Bucky holds it in his hand, the hoodie on his lap and he stares at the ring.

Everyone holds a tense breath as he slips the ring onto his right ring finger, heart breaking when he finds that it’s too loose. He picks up the hoodie and brings it to his nose, inhaling Steve’s scent that brought him so much comfort these last few years, through the days of the Sokovian accords, the panic attacks, the nightmares, the missions, the infinity wars, the arguments and make ups and the love. Bucky buries his face into the material and breaks, his stomach unravelling as his chest grows tight. 

It starts with a quiet sob, muffled by the hoodie, then a whimper, then another sob and a heaving deep breath before tears begin to soak into the material. Bucky is scared. He’s hurting and hopelessly in love with a dead man he can’t have back. Arms wrap around his body as he is overcome with pain, overwhelmed with loss. He wants Steve. He wants his husband to tell him that is okay, that he’s brave enough to just keep going because he doesn’t feel like he is. 

He cries until he thinks he’s going to cry, stopping when he feels the need to gag. He doesn’t. He swallows it down and pulls out of the arms that held him, thinner yet strong. Tony watches him head towards his bedroom, shutting the door behind him and climbing onto the bed with Steve’s ring loosely on his finger and his hoodie in his hand. He holds it close, tight to his chest and wonders if tony can find away to lock Steve’s smell in a bottle to be opened when Bucky needs it. 

-

Steve’s funeral is on a Sunday. And of course, it’s grey, it’s miserable and it’s wet. Everyone is sat with umbrellas as they watch a coffin being pulled by a lone black horse, the shadow of Bucky Barnes following behind it. He shows himself to be stoic, calm, brave. But in the inside, he’s crumbling, he’s dying, he feels like he’s going to faint behind the coffin which holds Steve. The rest of the avengers, agents from all agencies, police officers, military, other enhanced individuals and public like the streets for miles for a glance of Captain America’s casket and the big beast of a horse pulling it. 

It’s fitting. Bucky thinks. The horse shows Cap’s strength with thick, rippling muscles. It shows his bravery with its head held high, his determination as it follows the right path. 

Bucky feels sick. 

The horse doesn’t show Steve’s love, his reliance, resilience or his weaknesses, his anger that he only showed Bucky. 

Bucky walks for what has to be hours, soaked to the bone. He watches the horse pull up to the stage with the American flag back drop, a single lectern and a microphone. He looks to the coffin and he rests a hand beneath the flag, on the wood. “I’m with you, Stevie,” he whispers. He pushes up the flag and kisses the wood, resting his forehead against it for a few selfish seconds. 

It’s Sam who speaks up, announcing Captain America’s bravery, his loyalty, but reaching the world about Steve Rogers hope, his belief in other people and the love he had for Bucky Barnes. Bucky is glad it’s raining, so people don’t see the tears merging with rain. 

He can’t describe the feeling he has for the man in the casket. He feels homeless. He feels lost. What does he do now? How does he go on in his life without him? 

He sits through politicians and presidents and victims of attacks saved by Captain America talk about him like they knew him, talking about what Steve said to them in those moments, that they would be okay and how they believed him and that he was right. Bucky was just trying to get through it without any kind of episode, angry, hopeless, panic. 

At the end of the speeches Bucky didn’t listen to, the horse turns around and Bucky stands up. He follows the coffin again but the difference this time is that Natasha is with him, her hand in his on his right. Sam is there too, his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Tony joins too, walking beside Sam. 

The silence is haunting. It’s so colourless that Bucky thinks that like some thriller or horror film, Steve would be stood on the road up ahead in red, white and blue for the jump scare. 

After a moment of reverting into his own head, he comes back and hears footsteps. He looks behind him and sees that people who watched on the sidelines were now walking behind him and the avengers, silently and respectfully. Bucky looks back in front of him and cries, his quiet sobs filling people’s ears as he keeps pushing forwards because they’re here for you, Stevie. 

Stevie. 

-

Bucky goes home. Well, to the apartment Steve was home in. For some crazy reason, he thought Steve would be there waiting for him on the sofa with their famous plate of chicken nuggets, laughing at something on the television. 

Instead, he’s met with silence. He stalks around the apartment and checks all the rooms, making sure Steve is definitely gone. 

He shrugs out of his suit, throwing it in the bathtub with a wet slap to the plastic and goes to his bed, laying out naked and staring up at the ceiling, the ceiling he and steve stared at so many times. After a nightmare, after love making or during a conversation that either left them in stitches, holding their stomachs with laughter, or tears streaming down their cheeks after one of them said too much. 

He turns to his side and breathes in a deep breath, nostrils full of their scents. “I don’t believe it,” Bucky whispers, voice breaking. He lies on their bed until he falls asleep, too numb, to bone deep exhausted to even dream. 

-

Weeks pass by and it gets no easier. Steve’s unfinished sketches hang around him like skeletons. Bucky hasn’t touched his dirty laundry. It’s gross and unhygienic but part of him believes that Steve’ll come back to take the clothes to the machines downstairs. 

He takes longer showers now, forgets about razors and scissors and lets his stubble grow to a beard, lets his hair grow past his shoulders and lets it get to the point where he just re-uses dirty dishes and underwear. 

The days pass, Natasha, Tony and the team start doing missions again but Bucky does not, not knowing how he could possibly do another mission without Steve right by his side. He sleeps more often than not and when the numbness replaces itself with grief, dreams return. He wakes himself up screaming then cries when he realises Steve isn’t there to hold him through the terror. It always the same dream, Steve’s body crumpling forwards like a bag of bricks, eyes going distant, face slackening and Bucky running, not moving from the one spot he’s running on. 

Then, one night, the dream is different. Steve is there, in his Captain America uniform, the shield in his hands instead of on his back and Bucky is there too, dressed in the same uniform. “Wha-what?” Bucky mutters, looking at his hands, gold rings and mismatched skin. 

“Baby, you’re being so brave,” Steve says, voice echoing. Bucky looks up into those kind eyes. “I am so proud of you and I am so sorry I’ve left you all alone.”

“Steve.”

Steve shakes his head and takes a gentle step forwards, yet his boot hits the ground loudly. “I want you to do me a favour,” Steve says and looks to the shield in his hands. Bucky follows and his eyes are widening. He starts shaking his head. 

“Steve no, I can’t do that. It’s too painful I ca-“

“You can, my brave boy,” Steve tells him. “I can’t think of anyone better because you understand what it means to be Captain America, how to lead, how to be different to him and be yourself. Baby, I love you, more than you could imagine. And now it’s your turn to pick this metal piece of crap up and fight for what is right.” Bucky stares tearfully, struggling to distinguish the difference between dream and reality as his hands touch the rim of the shield. 

“Steve I’m scared.”

“I was too. But I knew you were with me. Know I’m with you, every step,” Steve replies. Bucky, instead of sadness, feels relief, calmness. Steve starts to fade as Bucky comes to consciousness, slowly, abnormally. His cheeks are wet and his throat hurts and he’s sick to his teeth of crying. 

He rubs his cheeks angrily and sits up, freezing when the shield is sat at the end of his bed, a note attached. 

‘Brave boy... do me proud‘


End file.
